God Must Be a Beautiful and Lonely Outcast
by Kyle Hemmings

For a moment, 
she forgets that her body 
is the bark of a decaying yew 
or the egrets 
that once rested on her branches 
light as Peruvian lilies 
bring only tiny jolts of pain 
snatching a bite of her flesh 
their nest is somewhere else. 
They leave her with 
a jagged line of imprints. 
I know I know she says. 
She won’t send me away.

This afternoon’s love 
will be like morphine 
and only a dose. 
I think of the drip rate 
of rain over crowded cities 
their underbellies. 
This scorned harlot of a body 
was once conjured 
from the River Pishon 
and I was the first and last man 
in Eden. If I ask her to undress, 
will she? Will it be too painful? 
And this forbidden apple we eat 
never tasted as sweet as today, 
our slow dying, unfolding. 
I can hear that river breathe.

 

KYLE HEMMINGS lives and works in New Jersey, where he skateboards and does backflips and falls. His stories, poems, and artwork can be viewed in numerous online journals.

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